In what was high drama for Capitol politicos,
Deborah Ortiz decided not to run for the Matsui congressional seat on Friday, leaving
Doris Matsui with only
Grantland Johnson and... as rumormongers are rumoring ...
Brett Granlund, to dispatch with before she can return home, to the cozy confines of NW Washington DC. (Why Brett would run, we don't know. They don't even HAVE a Simon's in DC!)
Workers' comp rates have fallen more than 14 percent in the last six months, but businesses say it's not enough. Does anyone else find it strange that
Richard Alarcon and labor leaders are the ones complaining the loudest that the savings should be passed on to business owners?
LADN's David Drucker runs down the governor's
"record state spending" while Roger Salazar
compares the guv's "not a tax increase" hit on seniors to the Legislature's 1997 "not a tax increase" hit to renters.
Speaking of spending, does the Legislature have a spending problem, or is it just the Senate? The Bee's Jim Sanders reports
the upper house's internal budget is climbing: "Between 2003 and 2006, the Senate's annual tab for meals is projected to rise from $68,000 to $81,000; for office alterations, from $62,000 to $145,000; for postage, from $538,000 to $730,000; and for furniture and equipment, from $164,000 to $745,000.By contrast, the Assembly has stopped purchasing meals for lawmakers and is spending far less than the upper house on discretionary items - though it has twice as many members, 80 to 40."
The Los Angeles Times picked MLK day to write the
introductory post-mortem on
Bernard Parks's run for Mayor, outlining campaign woes ranging from an exodus of talented staff to complaints about the ordering of pencils - and pointing a lot of fingers at the candidate's wife, who apparently calls him "Robert."
(As an aside, when Kermon Maddox says that Bobbie Parks is not a "
shy violet," he probably means that she's not a "
shrinking violet." It is unlikely that he was knowingly making reference to a
Rainbow Brite cartoon character.)
But to Parks, all this stuff about his balabusta was bupkus, and wouldn't stop him from joining his fellow candidates in some pandering to the Jewish vote. So you don't have to read the
actual article, here's the summary:
Parks: Knows Jewish police officers
Hahn: Glad to be coming back to Temple
Hertzberg: Donned a yarmulke
Villaraigosa: Quoted the Torah
Alarcon: Mentioned every Jewish teacher and coach who had served as a mentor to him (What? No mention of his close friend, Richard Katz?)
Tonight, Villaraigosa hopes to walk away with the
Democratic Party's endorsement in the race. Villaraigosa got the party nod in 2001, but still lost to Hahn.
Back on the topic post-mortems, someone
leaked a report citing a host of reasons for Podesto's 13,000 vote loss to Machado. Amazingly, the report failed to place blame with whomever designed the
Bonanza themed ads that left most political consultants, and apparently at least 13,000 voters, frozen in their tracks.
Beardslee set for executionThe clock is ticking for
Donald Beardslee who is
scheduled to die just after midnight tonight. Unless postponed by the Governor, Beardslee will be the 11th inmate put to death since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1978.
Sacbee's Clea Benson reviews the governor's
Medi-Cal reform plan.
Russ Bogh gets the Press-Enterprise's vote as the "
Legislature's resident high-tech gadget guru."
From the blogs: Matt Rexroad chimes in on his favorite subject
bashing the Speaker.
